A new look at an old baseball novel

Well, maybe not that old, relatively speaking.

David Jordan, who collaborated with the late Dave Parker on Cobra: A Life of Baseball and Brotherhood, posted this essay on one of the most talked about baseball novels in memory. Reprinted with permission.

THE ART OF FIELDING: A LITERARY CRITICISM

So the novel was mentioned here the other day as well as a recent deep discussion on the Defector website. I finally had a chance to re-read the book. My thoughts about the work validate the concerns of some of you here, but as a writer, and being among a lot of writers in our group, The Art of Fielding contains some value-added merits.

I almost got cute and created an Aparicio Rodriguez rookie card with a backstory, originally this Astros international free agent who became a famous “throw-in” to the great 1977 Joe Ferguson-Larry Dierker swap with the Cardinals, but that seemed excessive. Any excuse to play with ‘70’s baseball cards, I’m kind of there. In any case, let’s get to it…

The prose is just magnificent, evocative, outstanding imagery and sometimes very amusing observations. Chad Harbach is a thoughtful, insightful author with a lot to say and a lot more to offer intellectually.

One line in particular, exploring a notion that the last game of the season, even winning the World Series, still marks the death of the season, was an observation that I found extremely touching and thought-provoking.

I liked how Harbach conceived Westish College – the town felt lived in, arguably one of the deepest “characters” in the book. The setting reminded me slightly of Wesleyan, the elite, liberal arts college famous for its baseball field smack-dab in the middle of campus. Also Oberlin, to some degree.

I feel like I will be a better writer for having read The Art of Fielding. Grammatically speaking, Harbach’s word power is tremendous, strong, descriptive verbs. Simply a talented writer. Every open-minded author should read this book, just to experience prose at the highest level.

If you do a little research, you’ll find that Keith Gessen, the author’s roommate at the time that The Art of Fielding received its considerable advance, chronicled the entire process in a piece for Vanity Fair and ultimately an Amazon ebook. If you’re curious about how the publishing sausage gets manufactured, the ebook is very much worth the $2 spend. [My note: I just bought the ebook for 49 cents plus tax.]

The Art of Fielding is a baseball novel that’s written for the generic, fiction-reading audience more than “us“[baseball book readers]. It’s not written for us. Just look at the blurbs in the front of the book – New York Times, Oprah, James Patterson. A lot of us know that the blurb collection game is a necessary evil, but none of the sports book “regulars” show up among the numerous lines of industry praise. Where’s John Thorn? Where’s Jonathan Eig? Where’s Costas? The marketing team for this book swung for the fences and hit a promotional walk off, three-run homer. Good on the publisher, but we as a collective group weren’t front of mind for them.

To give a sense of the book’s readability, I breezed through the first 150 pages in a day, tough lugging over the next 150 over three days, then the final 200 pages took me about nine hours. Without being a professional copy editor, I think the book wouldn’t have lost much if it was 25-50 pages lighter.

Here’s where it gets tricky. The characters don’t act like real people – the two most prominent females are essentially plot-driving vehicles rather than fully-formed human beings.

Some of the baseball moments simply defy basic managerial/coaching logic, even stretching fiction logic. A character endures an incredibly awful fielding spell, while still batting a robust .448. Every one of his teammates, except for the captain, wants him benched ahead of an important game. Not a single character, including the head coach, suggests just having him DH to keep his vibrant stick in the lineup.

There isn’t a college baseball coach in America who would allow a player to read a book on the bench during every single game, I don’t care how “tight” his line drives zoom into the outfield. That player would be benched, suspended, then dropped from the roster. Of course, without a character who reads a book on the bench, the core plot disintegrates.

How does not a single character yell “HEADS UP!!!” at a critical moment in the book? There were at least 5-10 players focused on the direction of the dugout during that play.

The author clearly knows baseball and name-checks all the right players who suffered arm ailments (Blass, Sax, Sasser, Knoblauch, Ankiel, etc.) That said, I’m sorry, the bench-warming pinch-hitter for a DIII baseball program is not batting third in the NCAA WORLD SERIES finale. Any player that talented would be in the regular lineup throughout the season, but he can’t be a starter because that character needs to be sitting on the bench, reading a book, when, well…

The reality of a 5’10, 150-LB SS going in the first round during the 2000’s seems remote at best. I wish Baseball-Reference could filter their draft data for height but from what I saw in the last 3-4 drafts during the later years of the decade, the only player under 6’0 drafted in the first round from less than a DI college was Ben Revere, a high schooler by the Minnesota Twins (Revere also signed for one of the lowest bonuses in that year, $750k.) To his credit, Harbach accurately portrays potential draft outcomes. In some cases, late picks back then received six-figure bonuses in the 32/33rd round.

For a college student to have no idea that his roommate of three months plays the same sport that he does is absolutely absurd – especially with the roommate owning a copy of the main character’s favorite book, the book that he has based his entire life upon. The moment the main character enters his dorm room for the first time, sees that magic book on his roommate’s bookshelf – the only baseball book on the shelf, mind you, and he doesn’t ask “Dude, why do you own this?” C’mon.

The father breaking his promise to meet his distressed daughter at dinner seemed more of a plot contrivance than an organic move.

OH, this is the best.

A) The main character worships a specific (fictional) Hall-of-Famer.

B) The title of the book is based on a popular baseball treatise written by this Hall of Famer – think Ted Williams The Science of Hitting.

C) Main character’s teammate, the team captain, does everything in his power throughout the book to advance the main character’s well-being and baseball prospects. The team captain is the most thoughtful character in the book.

D) The actual Hall-of-Famer attends a game where the main character makes critical mistakes.

E) Neither the coach, nor the team captain, nor the president of the school who attends the game, even sits right beside said Hall-of-Famer, tries to get the iconic player to meet the main character for a much-needed pep talk.

Within the universe of the story, maybe the Hall of Famer is a jerk, but we never find out, because nobody asks him to help the boy out. Maybe the main character blows off his hero, but he’s never given the chance. In real life, one of those people would ask the Hall of Famer to intervene, because everyone is fully aware of how much the main character worships the Hall of Famer. It’s ridiculous (and quite frankly, a lost narrative opportunity) for someone to ask that character and at the very least, provide some depth to the Hall of Famer, who sort of hovers over the story in a ghostly fashion.

There are a few plot developments (a terrible personal betrayal, for one thing) that appears conceived in the narrative with one eye on a film/prestige television option. I don’t blame the author for that at all, but characters are kept apart at times with the subtlety of a Ross & Rachel season-long story arc.

There are times where the author falls on the wrong side of explaining character motivations in the manner of a literary critic rather than a basic narrator. There are moments in the book where it feels as though the story is being narrated by CLIFFS NOTES.

The final 20 pages don’t add much value and one critical moment in particular feels so unrealistic that I kept saying to myself, “Why is he harping on this?” A savvy, high-level college executive with sensitivities in the 2010 academic climate would never, ever go there…except to advance the plot.

There is some belief to the idea that select authors/writers can pitch certain books that others can’t, that such a thing as “Preferred author candidates” does exist. In other words, an editor of a respected literary magazine, with industry connections (and Gessen speaks to this in the ebook) can pitch a work of fiction like The Art of Fielding. A dentist from Exton, PA cannot pitch this book and expect a similar six-figure advance outcome. Acquisition editors (and agents, who are inundated with submissions) will recoil at the sight of a 100-word sentence and use that as an excuse to reject the book, or the numerous adverbs (also frowned upon in loftier literary circles), use that as an excuse to reject the book. The novel gets something of a pass for certain grammatical choices where books coming from less-connected authors would be penalized.

Final Answer? If you’re a writer who is serious about their craft, you need to read The Art of Fielding. Trust me, exposure to this book will enhance your skills. Decent baseball content amid an unrealistic plot incorporating characters whose inorganic motivations lack an inner life at the expense of driving the narrative forward. However, Harbach’s prose is often a clinic in beautiful imagery and brilliance.